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Sunday, February 17, 2013

Salvation Sunday: Are you running with patience?

When there are physical races, the person who always wins is the one who
finishes first. This is interesting because spiritual races are to the ones who
endure to the end and not necessarily to the fastest runner.

In this life,
Christians are basically running a race trying to get heaven. Our goal is to
stay chasing after God and the final destination is to be with Him in heaven.
Now, many times we have distractions which will come in and take us off course.
These distractions can be job wise or it can be temptations. Now, the reading in
proverbs talked about a particular temptation. In proverbs, the writer is
talking about watching out for harlots or promiscuous women. I believe that this
also goes for men as well. Basically, you cannot listen to that temptation and
you have to look to Jesus for help and strength. It's not going to be easy
because it's life but with God it's a whole lot better. But that right there is
only one temptation. There are many others depending on your walk with God.

Now, when you're running the race, you might get tired or discouraged.
You may be wondering where Jesus is because He said He will never leave you and
He said that you won't give you more than you can bear. You may feel like you
can't go any further or that you are stuck. You may feel that you are not going
to be able to finish the race. I just want to encourage you to hold out and keep
pressing forth because God has you. You just have to seek Him. The Israelites
we're in the wilderness for an extremely long time. And as any human would do,
they started complaining about the lack of food and water. They realized that
they had everything they needed in Egypt besides the freedom aspect. So, the
Israelites came to Moses and gave their complaints and issues. So, Moses came to
God and cried out unto God. God confirmed that He heard their cries and spoke to
Moses about how their supply would come. And as always, God's promises came to
life. Now, with this race, you will have ups and downs. But, that's the time
when you have to go to God and talk to Him. You may have to cry out to Him. When
Jesus was at the garden of gethsemane, He cried out unto God before dying on the
cross. He told God to take this from me because I don't want to do it. And
mainly that was the flesh speaking and also fighting with the devil. And Jesus
also said on the cross, my God my God why hast thou forsaken me. So crying out
unto God is not the issue. Actually, God wants you to cry out to him. He wants
you to tell Him your troubles. But, He also wants you to trust Him. The thing is
He doesn't want to you to take the situation into your hands. When you do that,
it says that you don't trust Him. You don't trust that God can bring you out.
This also goes into running the race with patience. Hebrews 12:1 really got me
on the patience aspect of running the race. "Wherefore seeing we also are
compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every
weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with PATIENCE
the race that is set before us.". God wants us to run this race with patience.
He wants us not to rush through it for a couple of reasons. First, you'll miss
out on the miracles that God has for you. In addition, there are people on the
way that God is going to want you to pull them in the race. And God wants you to
trust Him ALL the time. He wants you to trust Him because He knows the right
time for your blessings. We can't rush order our blessings because God may not
want it rush ordered. He may want it delivered a couple weeks later, when He
knows that you will really need it. So, we have to be patient and we have to
trust God.

So, as you're running the race, I encourage you to run with
patience and trust God. He will bring you through it and He will bless you right
on time. Don't give up and keep running because the race is to the one who
endures to the end. Continue to run your race until you finish it.